Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 22
Corey was surprised nobody had asked about the other raid. If the Families captains had been mesmerized by the raids into the Setosha system, maybe the Imperial commander was too. She couldn’t count on that, though.
On the cruiser Pavlushkin, Corey nodded to Captain Browne as they watched Meredith Lee’s Battle Group jump out to their Initial Point. “All right, Kris, let’s do it.” She switched channels. “4th Cruiser, initial jump as planned.”
She had originally proposed this raid as a step toward achieving her larger plan to destroy the Imperial fleet. There had been neither the time nor the resources to try it on any of the earlier raids. That was changed now that the clandestine parts of the previous raids had succeeded. Resources and time could finally be assigned to try a mission where the chance of success was entirely unknown.
The 4th Cruiser Squadron had been one of the squadrons defending the Setosha system when the Imperials had first attacked. Annissa Graham, the squadron commander, had been killed in the first 10 minutes of the fighting. Her ships had survived, and after a visit by a repair ship, were finally battle-ready.
Admiral Bridges had picked the 4th Cruiser for the covert part of this raid for two reasons. First, they needed a shakedown cruise to make sure all their previous damage had been properly repaired, and second, they already knew what it was like facing Imperial battleships, so they didn’t need to raid the inner system. Their commanders had met with Leah Bridges shortly before the raid began. They had reviewed the plan for their part of the action, made a few small changes, and then Leah had surprised Corey by assigning her to take temporary command of the squadron.
“Why me?” Corey had asked, startled by Admiral Bridges’ announcement. “Why not someone from the 4th Cruiser?”
“You have squadron command experience,” Admiral Bridges said, “and you’re available. I would have one of their officers take command, but stepping into a position like that takes time, and time is what we don’t have right now. It’s not just that critical change in thinking where you have to separate yourself from the ship you used to command. A squadron commander must be able to do that, and must have the time to know she has it right. We both know squadron command experience is something you learn by doing. You’ve been there, Corey, and they haven’t.”
She didn’t add that she was hoping the young captain would see something on this raid, something she wouldn’t have seen from examining scan records. She wasn’t happy with the plans they had, and was hoping this would prompt Corey to produce a better one.
“I’m flattered, ma’am,” Corey said. “But I thought there were legal objections to my commanding.”
“There are,” Admiral Bridges said. “That’s why I called this meeting. The regulations have provisions for crisis situations where officers who have been removed by wounds can be replaced temporarily by any qualified commander for no more than a day, with the consent of the ship commanders. This raid will be over within a day.”
Corey looked at the faces around the table. Several of the officers smiled, and the others nodded; none seemed overtly hostile. “Yes, ma’am,” she said finally. “I’ll do my best.”
Sherril Harris, the lanky, wasted-looking captain of Fukumoto, shared a thin smile from chapped, dry lips. Like her cruiser, Sherril had needed repairs and restoration after the earlier battle. She had refused to let radiation sickness or broken ribs separate her from her ship, her crew, or her duty. “We’ll follow you, ma’am,” she said. “Just show us what you want done, and we’ll make it happen.”
They emerged from Jump right on course and two seconds early. Corey spent the first hour of their approach studying the Scan. At this distance, its display of the gravity anomalies that were ships’ drives was much more informative than the slow, light-speed information available through her shunt. The only Imperial ship they detected that looked like it could possibly intercept them was too far away to be a bother. It was undoubtedly alerting everyone it could, but that was all it could do. They would know in a few minutes when they began picking up broadcast radio signals from it. If things went as planned, this part of the raid would happen in a part of space entirely devoid of Imperial Navy ships. Still, you had to assume the Imperials would try something unpleasant.
“Time to arrival at the planetoid?” Corey asked.
“Two hours, ma’am.” The girl on the Flag Scan looked up from her console. “We are just over 31 minutes from turnover and deceleration.”
“Thanks. Carry on.” Corey checked the rest of the squadron: five other cruisers, two escorts filled with Marines, and three of the Children ghosting along somewhere nearby. Everyone seemed ready for anything that might happen. Satisfied, she pulled off the shunt collar, undogged the hatch, and walked down the three steps to Captain Browne’s bridge.
“I’m under orders to eat,” she said when Captain Browne looked up, politely removing her shunt collar. “I’ll be in the mess.”
Kris laughed. “Aye, ma’am, you could use it. Admiral Bridges was very specific about that.” Kris Browne was a tall blonde woman with the broad face and warm smile of Family South Seas on Home. “She warned me not to loan you any Marines to make sure you do that, either. She said you’d just slip them your food while you chewed on your ideas.”
“I wish I’d had more time to recover,” Corey said, looking at her missing hand. “I’m supposed to be feeding a crop of healthy new nerve cells as well as getting back in shape after a year in lower G. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t hungry or tired, or both.” The nerves in her stump were taking their own frustrating time to heal, so her prosthetic hadn’t been replaced yet.
Kris ran her practiced eyes over the Scan. “I hate to say it, but right about now I’d really like to have Tony Pagadan and his half-dozen PSK heavy cruisers along for the ride, even if they would slow us down.”
“I know what you mean. But they’re not here, and this part of the mission should be quiet. We hope.”
“I’ll see you in an hour,” Kris turned back to her console, fitting the collar back on her shunt. “We’ll be past turnover, and the other attack should be well under way by then.”
Corey waved and headed for the mess. An hour later, she was back on the Flag Bridge, holding the remains of her lunch in a napkin. The Scan didn’t show the changes she expected.
“Where’s the other force?” she asked the girl running the Flag Scan. “Meredith should be in-system by now.” She’d counted on that to draw the Imperials’ attention away from her operation.
“No word,” Tech Kaitlin Ross said. “And nothing on Scan, either, ma’am.”
“Do you have any hyperjump footprints?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
Corey sat back in her command chair. “There should have been one by now. The plan was for them to be in-system before our turnover. What’s our projected arrival time?”
“Just under 38 minutes, ma’am.”
Corey fit the shunt collar against her neck, shrugging slightly to get it comfortable. She checked the rest of the formation, and then focused on the group of planetoids ahead. Setosha, like Home and Weon, had a number of military bases and warehouses spotted throughout the system. Most of Setosha’s had been evacuated immediately after the invasion. The people, and whatever equipment that could be quickly stripped from their labs, had been relocated to Weon and Home where they could resume their work.
Base 5A had been researching cortex-based homing systems for missiles, specifically those formed around the cortex of a piranha. Base 5A was notorious for one homing system in particular, the shark cortex missile. That had been a disappointing project the development staff had yet to live down. The resulting missile had proved too slow to catch speedy Idenux cruisers and had occasionally been too stupid to recognize Families ships as ‘not food’. If there were any of those slow but stubborn things left, they were most likely deactivated and mothballed at Base 5A in the Setosha System.
During the invasion, the base had been sealed and abandoned. The aim of the 4th Cruiser’s attack was to gather all the working models and research notes for the piranha cortex seeker. There were supposed to be a few thousand of the piranha guidance units prepared, some of which might be fully assembled into missiles. If there were, Corey had plans for those missiles.
“I’m getting a residual trickle of neutrons,” Tech Ross announced quietly a few minutes later. “Did anyone say whether the base went to shutdown or standby on the power systems when they evacuated?”
“That’s not in my records,” Corey said. She changed her viewpoint and looked at the base through different frequencies. Unease tickled somewhere in the back of her mind. “Navy training is to put everything into shutdown.”
“They weren’t Navy, ma’am,” the gal on the Fleet Comm console said. “It was a civilian base originally established for some other reason.”
“How much time left on our approach?” Corey asked.
“Just over 14 minutes, ma’am.”
“I should know that,” Corey muttered. “Just being nervous.” She studied the Flag Scan. “Where are Meredith’s ships?”
The next few minutes crept by. Her nerves stretched tighter and tighter. Something about this situation was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She spent the last few minutes of the approach trying to dredge up that memory, but nothing came. Finally, they were at rest with respect to the base, and the escorts closed to launch their Landers full of Marines. Ten minutes after the landers had detached from the escorts, but before they could land, the Scan lit up.
Flag Scan--“Fusion systems powering up!”
Instantly, Corey recognized the Imperial trap, powered-down ships exactly like what Alan had faced.
Bridge Scan--“Gravity systems coming online!”
Flag Scan--“We’re being tracked by fire control lidar! Not detection values, repeat, not detection values yet.”
“Get the landers back,” Corey snapped. “Guynemer, cover them. Scan, readings on the power sources?”
Flag Scan--“Eight, no, 10, two more, 12 power sources, ma’am ... large power sources. Six more small ones. From neutrino flux, they’re within 5 light seconds of us.”
Simple trap! The words echoed and echoed again in the back of Corey’s mind as she berated herself for failing to recognize those telltale neutrons. She hadn’t known the type of power plant on the base. She should have checked.
“Bader, help Guynemer cover the escorts as they withdraw. Report when you have those landers.”
“Corey, it’s Svetya. We’re closing with the sources.”
“Don’t get yourselves killed, Svetya. I’m going to need your firepower.”
The three sparks on the Scan that identified the Children dimmed as they cut back on their power, then faded entirely as they went to stealth mode. In seconds, their drive signatures blossomed sharply again as they looped away from whatever was coming out of hiding.
“Corey, Svetya. Two large ships, eight medium-sized ones, and four smaller ones. I read it as two battlecruisers or battleships, eight big cruisers, probably their heavy cruisers, and four smaller cruisers, what the PSK calls a light cruiser. The six smallest drive signatures are those Fast Attack types. Those are already boosting towards you.”
Those were dangerous, fast, well-armored, and deadly at close range. “Kill those as soon as you get a chance, Svetya. Thanks for the update. Guynemer, where are those landers?”
“Two already landed and committed, ma’am. There’s fighting on the planetoid. Wildcat has recovered its landers with a lot of very annoyed Marines. They’re already boosting. Bader is covering.”
Corey stared at the scan, feeling sick. It would take at least 15 minutes, maybe 20, to pick up the Marines who were now locked in combat with an Imperial ground force, and that was assuming the Marines could break off combat immediately. She couldn’t pull them out in the time she had left. Unless she pulled the squadron back right now, she would lose a lot more than four squads of Marines.
“Kris, close with the planetoid and give all the firepower you can to the Marines. Get those Imperial troops off of them. The deeper in that rock our gals can dig, the better their chances are right now.” She glanced through the list of officers on this raid and then changed channels. “Fourth Officer Stanton.”
“Stanton here,” replied a tense voice.
“Captain Andersen. Getting you out is looking mighty slim at the moment. I’ve ordered Pavlushkin in close to see if we can buy you enough time to dig in.”
“Understood, ma’am. Don’t ... don’t try to pick us up. We’ll dig deep enough into this rock that we can hold out for a few hours.”
“I’ll get some more muscle, and we’ll be back to pull you out, Chloe.”
“Ma’am, don’t ... just a moment.” After a few seconds, the Marine Officer was back. “All right, all right, all right. Ma’am, we’ve broken into the lower levels. I figure we can hold out here for at least 40 hours in our suits without a problem. We can do 90 hours if we don’t have to fight for more than another hour.”
“Corey--Svetya. No more Fast Attacks. We’ll try one of those light cruisers next. They don’t seem to know we’re here. Looks like they’re still trying to figure out what hit their Fast Attacks.”
Flag Scan--“Targets are boosting. Their vector is a straight-line intercept with us, 240 Gs.”
Corey bit her lip. “Good luck, Chloe,” she said quietly, then, “All ships, boost at standard, Plan 2.”
The numbers were stark. With their current acceleration, the approaching Imperial ships would be in engagement range in six minutes. The Families Cruisers had a higher acceleration, so the total time the Imperial ships would have to engage the 4th Cruiser was 12 minutes.
They should have waited until we were a little more committed, Corey thought. But they brought their power up faster than when they wounded Alan. I wonder? Are all their systems active yet?
“Phantom,” she ordered the modified escort that had landed Chloe Stanton’s trapped Marines. “Boost at maximum away from the formation. Clear the area and record what happens. Bader, keep an eye on Phantom, but stay close to the rest of the squadron. I’m going to need you. All ships...” she paused, picturing what she wanted. “All ships, give me basic formation 12. I want a wall between the escorts and those Imperials. Keep it tight but have your ships evade constantly. We want to maximize our firepower and minimize their hits.”
“Ma’am,” Talia Kuchinova said from Preddy. “With them chasing us, we’ll have a larger missile engagement time than they will. But...”
“Thanks, Talia, you’re right. And we’ll be in their energy weapon range longer, too.” She felt the familiar tickle of a plan surfacing through the turmoil of her thoughts. Alan had turned his Imperial ambush inside out and stunned the Imperials. Was there a chance she could do the same? She needed more information. Forcing the panicky, reactive thoughts to the back of her mind, she looked at her Scan and read the known facts about each enemy ship. The two big ones were too nimble to be battleships.
“I see higher acceleration than an Imperial battleship can manage. Those are Imperial battlecruisers back there. They are long on energy weapons and have only a few missile launchers. They sacrifice armor and structure for acceleration. Ease our acceleration back to 250 Gs over the next two minutes. On my mark, we are going to reverse acceleration, go to maximum, and close with them.”
“Ma’am?” Kris asked. “Close with them? Are you sure?”
The plan crystallized completely in her mind. “Yes,” Corey said as the certainty of it flooded her. “Yes, I am. We’re going to go right back past them at close range. Draw your cats all the way in right now to give them our new vector, spin them out again right after we reverse. You’ll want to mass them ahead of your ships on the engagement side. This will give us a whole lot shorter engagement time, and we’ll hit the Imperials while they are still bringing up the last of their systems. Better, they won’t have a chance to run this in their simulators. If we let them have 12 minutes to pick at us with their energy weapons, they’ll kill us.” She drew a shaky breath. This was the moment of truth. Would they follow her orders?
“Acknowledge.”
“Pavlushkin--aye.”
“Guynemer--aye.”
“Bader--aye.”
“Preddy--aye.”
“Fukumoto--aye.”
“Blakeslee--aye.”
She watched the Imperial ships through her shunt, and then pulled herself out of it to think. She had a few seconds before the 4th Cruiser would reverse acceleration. There was another possibility in this solution. She couldn’t just leave Chloe Stanton and her Marines to die on that rock. It went against every instinct.
“Con?” she asked out loud, just as if she were back on the bridge of Anthony Pagadan’s flagship Pegasus. “How long would it take to do a rendezvous with the planetoid and pick up the Marines we left behind?”
“At least 40 minutes, ma’am. We’d have to get the landers out and...”
“What if the Marines didn’t use landers?”
“12 minutes, ma’am,” the girl said after some thought and calculation. “But I’m not sure we can get all of them, ma’am. That’s a lot of very small targets.”
“It’s a better chance than they have right now.” Corey bit her lip again, thinking it through one more time. “Calculate our course, plotting that rendezvous and assuming the Imperial ships reverse as soon as we do when they come after us. Give me how long they will take to achieve energy weapon range with us again. And then give me some numbers on what happens if the Marines boost as well.”
She slipped back into the shunt. “All ships, can we pick up the Marines from that Base on the fly? No landers. They boost from the surface and we scoop them up. Can we do it?”
“Thin,” Kris answered after a few seconds. “But we probably could get some of them. Hard on the Marines, though.”
“We need two ships to do this right,” Talia said. “The other four stay back and cover and catch anyone we miss. We’ve done this before, when the Impies first blew through here; us and Sherril on Fukumoto.”
“Sherril?” Corey asked. “Do you think it’ll work?”
“Risky, ma’am, but the alternative is worse. We might not get them all, but any chance is better than none. I say we try it. We should get most of them.”
“Thanks, Sherril, Talia. No chance is exactly what those Marines have if we don’t try this. All right, we’ll go to a modified chevron formation. Fukumoto and Preddy will be up front to catch Marines. Talia, contact the Marines and let them know what we plan. Give them a vector and a time when they’ll have to boost. Blakeslee and Guynemer will follow behind and to the left to catch anyone who gets missed. Pavlushkin and Bader will be the third pair and be to the right. We have one chance to make this work, ladies. Let’s give them our best.”
Corey withdrew from the shunt as the Captains talked among themselves, arranging details. Tactics, she decided with a silent, rueful laugh, was really a desperate attempt to arrange a best worst-case result. She had to admit that the PSK Strategy Board had been right in one respect. A Families cruiser could not slug it out with a major Imperial or PSK warship. Fortunately, they had other choices.
“I know they’re tracking us with their fire control,” Corey told Tech Ross on the Flag Bridge Scan. “How soon do you think it will be before they have missiles on the way?”
“Based on the other times we’ve seen them, ma’am, about another minute.”
Corey stretched. “Very well.” She closed her eyes and entered the shunt.
“Status change?”
“None, ma’am,” Kris said.
“All ships, ready to execute?”
“Pavlushkin--aye.”
“Guynemer--aye.”
“Bader--aye.”
“Preddy--aye.”
“Fukumoto--aye.”
“Blakeslee--aye.”
“Very well.” She looked at the scan. The Imperials’ fire control solution had to be firming up. They had to be running their final tracking solutions, which meant right about ... now.
“All ships, execute! Maximum evasive maneuvering while we pass through their energy weapon envelope.”
All six ships ceased accelerating, flipped end for end, and then went to full acceleration with a completely opposite vector. As they accelerated, they began twitching randomly through tiny vector changes as the ships’ brains worked with each other and individually to confuse Imperial fire control computers.
Families cruisers had a maximum possible acceleration of 410 Gs for up to 10 minutes. They used all of it, and Engineering officers strove to coax even more from their screaming drives. The distance between the 4th Cruiser and the Imperial ships suddenly was shrinking at an incredible rate. Moments before it had looked like a missiles and energy weapons engagement that would expose Corey’s ships to the Imperials’ superior firepower for a minimum of 12 minutes. Now it looked like that exposure would last no more than 22 seconds, and the angles and vectors were such that the chances of either side getting missile hits were a lot less than before.
Hits from energy weapons were another matter. The Imperial battlecruisers had been built around huge energy weapons. They used those weapons as quickly as they could, blazing away at the 4th Cruiser. The extreme approach and the constant vector changes from the Families ships threw off Imperial firing solutions almost as quickly as they were derived. Hits from energy weapons during those deadly 22 seconds were more a matter of luck than careful calculation.
Pavlushkin shuddered as something connected. Corey saw the alarms going off on a side screen. That wasn’t her worry. She forced herself to focus on the battle. She thought ahead to the few seconds of their closest approach. She wanted to maximize her squadron’s firepower and also spread out her ships enough that they would be even more difficult targets. She pictured the formation she wanted and used her Command link to directly tell all the ships’ brains to effect the change. The modified chevron formation she’d ordered earlier now flexed and twisted. Her ships tilted from a wall of ships to an angled plane still presenting the maximum firepower but exposing the minimum silhouette as they flashed past the Imperials.
Something big and bright flashed on Bader. Debris spun away. Corey watched in silent anguish as the cruiser suddenly fell behind.
Flag Scan--”Imperial ships are changing vector. Looks like they’re trying to reverse too, ma’am.”
“They’re not going to catch us,” Corey said. “Do the numbers. They should have reversed the moment we did.”
Missiles crisscrossed between the two formations. A few missiles flashed at them, and Pavlushkin and Fukumoto were both hit with bomb-pumped lasers. Corey saw more hits on the Imperial ships. Everything happened very fast after that. More beams lanced out, more missiles, more hits. Something flashed into a globe of fire, and thunder bawled somewhere in Pavlushkin’s hull. Corey felt the deck tremble beneath her. She knew that people were dying somewhere close, air was gushing out, and fires were raging, but she couldn’t let that shake her concentration. Her job was to get all of her ships through the storm.
As suddenly as it began, they were past, opening the distance, sprinting out of energy weapon targeting acquisition range, and then out of missile range.
“All ships. Report.”
“Pavlushkin--moderate damage, ma’am. Still assessing.”
“Guynemer--minor damage. Looks like no crew casualties.”
“Preddy--hardly touched us.”
“Fukumoto--moderate damage. Two energy mounts and two missile launchers out. Still checking crew.”
“Blakeslee--they missed us completely, ma’am.”
The reports stopped. Corey waited a moment more and then asked directly. “Bader, damage report please.”
She couldn’t see the Bader anywhere near them. Through her shunt, Cory searched behind the 4th Cruiser. She sensed unpowered wreckage behind them on their current vector. She zoomed in to examine one section that seemed larger than the rest. It looked like part of a Families cruiser that had been cut in half. Rescue beacons flickered in the wreckage. The sick sensation settled in Corey’s stomach again, twisting like a spear in her gut. We can’t go back, that would be suicide. There are other lives to save now. She forced herself to look away.
“Flag Scan--enemy plot?”
“Still changing course, ma’am. Either they are too stupid to learn from our maneuver, or there is something about Imperial ships that I just don’t understand. They don’t seem to want to flip in place. Maybe they can’t. Too soon to tell, but it sure looks like they’re trying to turn around and chase us while presenting the same flank to us all the time. If they continue doing what they’re doing, energy weapon range is 18 minutes away at standard Imperial acceleration.”
“Svetya, how are you three doing?”
“Doing fine, Corey. Wildcat and Phantom are both clear. We’re covering your rear now.”
“Fukumoto, Preddy, are you ready to pick up the Marines?”
“The Marines are already boosting from that rock, ma’am,” Talia said. “Three minutes to pick up.”
“We have a time limit, ladies, 10 minutes; no more. Give those Marines your best!”
Corey studied the scan through her shunt. The Imperial ships had finally managed to start back towards the 4th Cruiser. She wished she could do something about Bader, but it wasn’t looking possible. Anyone who returned to the pieces of Bader would end up in the middle of the best range for the missiles and energy weapons of the pursuing Imperial heavy ships. With a heavy heart, she pushed Bader into a corner of her mind and focused on saving everyone else.
The next 10 minutes crawled by as the 4th Cruiser decelerated and maneuvered slowly, tracking Marines in their powered armor and “catching” them with ropes, nets, gals in Navy vacuum suits with safety tethers, and whatever else that looked like it might work. Seeing that the effort was in capable hands, Corey turned her attention back to the Imperial ships. Their formation looked oddly ragged, as if they were still sorting things out. That seemed like poor station keeping, even for shot-up Imperials.
Both battlecruisers were stubbornly hanging on her trail. Each was out-gassing from hits, and both of them were accelerating at perhaps two-thirds of their previously observed rates. Two of the larger cruisers and two of the smaller ones were still holding formation with the battlecruisers. Corey spotted another of the large cruisers farther away, shaping an orbit for the inner system. One of the smaller cruisers followed it. Both showed debris and gas trails even at this distance, and their hulls radiated brightly in the infrared. Two other cruisers were busy on a completely different vector from everyone else, obviously chasing something.
“Ma’am,” Talia alerted her. “We have the Marines, all but one. They brought two of their dead out, and some of the things they were after, too.”
“Corey--Svetya. Marina picked up one Marine. Becka and I are covering her.”
Instantly, Corey ordered the squadron away. “All ships--get your people inside. The Children caught the other Marine.” Corey studied her scan again. “Boost at 265 Gs, rendezvous Point 6. Svetya, send Marina with us. You and Becka see what you can do to annoy the Impies behind us. Everyone else, forward your casualty lists and damage reports to me, please.”
They still had to run out of the long-range missile envelope of the two larger Imperial cruisers, but the cats were out and busy. Only three of the Imperials’ missiles got close enough to be engaged, and those were quickly destroyed by the point defense arrays. Because the Imperial ships were in pursuit, the Families ships had a much larger long-range missile envelope. They scored some hits, but nothing fatal. Finally, the 4th Cruiser was entirely out of range of the Imperial ships, with a free run to the hyper limit.
When it was clear they were safely away, Corey ordered her crews to stand down. Tech Ross languidly stretched at her console before unsealing the hatch to the main Bridge. Noise and comments filtered through the opening. Corey sagged back into her chair for a moment of rest. They’d taken damage, but they were safe. They’d gotten away, well, most of them.
She gave up on the Scan. She didn’t want to stare at Bader anymore. Her mind felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. She wanted to sleep. She undid her safety straps and walked slowly to the open hatch.